If in Italy it is not uncommon to find streets and neighborhoods called Cincinato, more familiar is the name of a city in the US state of Ohio. Although similar, these names are due to different reasons, since the American city is named in memory of The Society of Cincinnati (a society of veterans of the Revolution), while the Italians pay homage directly to the one who originated the name:Lucio Quincio Cincinnatus, a Roman dictator considered a model of virtue and honesty, as well as detachment from power.
It should be clarified that, in Ancient Rome, the term dictator it lacked the negative connotation it has today. The dictatorship was a magistracy from times of the Republic (magister populi , was officially called, well dictator was a popular name) that gave its holder full powers to deal with an exceptional situation, generally related to security, so that the system of two praetors (later two consuls) would not hamper quick decision-making. So that these vast powers did not constitute a risk, tempting the dictator to perpetuate himself, limitations were established such as the obligation to apply that power only to face the danger that had raised him and having to resign once it passed (or within a period of six months). ).
Generally, given the nature of the missions for which they were appointed, they were efficient soldiers, although their appointment followed strictly political procedures:through a senatus consultum , the Senate authorized the praetors or consuls to elect a dictator; they did it by mutual agreement or, if not, by lottery. Finally, the comitia curata or assembly voted its approval and granted the imperium (command) the chosen one. Some of the most famous figures in Roman history exercised dictatorship, even several times:Quintus Fabio Máximo, Julius Caesar, Sila... But none achieved the prestige and recognition of Cincinnatus.
It is estimated that he was born between 518 and 519 BC, when there was still a monarchy. He belonged to the gens Quincia, a minor patrician clan because it was not originally from Rome but from Alba Longa (a Latin city located about twenty kilometers to the south), but it was wealthy enough for its members to have access to the magistracies. Cincinnatus, in fact, was but a cognomen (a nickname) meaning "curly hair", which probably alluded to his physical appearance. The entry of this character into history was delayed until the middle of the following century, from the year 460 BC, when some peoples from the center and northwest of the Italian Peninsula began to constitute a threat to Rome.
They were the Volscians, Sabines and Aequi, who were related and whom the Romans considered veteres hostes romanorum eternal enemies. Their periodic incursions through Lazio became greater when they broke the peace treaty they had with their neighbors to try to take over Tusculum and managed to pocket the army of the consul Lucius Minutius Esquilino, who had been sent to rescue that city, in his own camp. . Faced with the consequent danger of being exterminated and leaving defenseless not only Tusculum but Rome itself, the consul sent an urgent request for help. An extreme solution was imposed and in those cases, as we mentioned before, they resorted to appointing a dictator.
The other consul, Cayo Nautio Rutilo, and his new companion, Marco Horacio Pulvilo, agreed to appoint Cincinnatus. Because the? Because of the prestige that he had acquired years ago, since he was not a stranger. In the year 460 BC, after the consul Publius Valerius Publicola -one of the founders of the republic, after participating in the overthrow of Tarquinius the Proud , the last king- was assassinated in a revolt that the plebeians organized against the tribunes, due to the opposition of the former to the Terentilia Arsa Law (which prohibited them from trading land with each other to prevent the creation of large estates), Cincinnatus had been elected consul suffectus (substitute consul) and settled the insurrection with a skillful compromise policy:on the one hand, he repressed the riots with an iron fist, but on the other, he abolished the controversial law, thus restoring tranquility.
Of course, it cost him money and family, because his son Caeso de el, accused of organizing street lynchings of commoners, had to flee to Etruria and was sentenced to death in absentia while his father had to face a heavy fine. The amount of the penalty was so high that he was forced to sell off his properties to pay for it, ending up leaving public life to retire to a small farm that he kept. Or so it was said, since today it is considered that the stories of the life of Cincinnatus were surely conceived a posteriori to underscore his virtues and it is possible that the story of his impoverishment is false, as are other extant references to his military experience.
In any case, tradition says that the senators in charge of appointing him dictator found him personally working in the fields, plow in hand. He accepted the proposal, asked his wife Racilia for the toga and went to the Forum to assume the dictatorship for six months, convening an assembly in which he named Lucio Tarquicio magister equitum (his assistant to him). He also ordered all men of military age to report to the Champ de Mars at the end of the day with food for five days. They did so and then they were each handed twelve unsubs (sudis or vallus , in singular; they were pointed wooden stakes, more than a meter and a half long, with which the perimeter of the legionary camps was surrounded), setting out to break the siege to which Lucius Minutius Esquilinus was subjected.
However, the mission of the unsubs it was not to reinforce the castrum besieged but to isolate the one of the ecuos, that was in Monte Algido. The unusual operation was carried out at night and, in the morning, those affected tried to put up a fight but that line of stakes at an angle hindered them and Minucius Esquilino also took advantage of the occasion to leave his entrenchment and join Cincinnatus, surrounding the enemy . The equos, caught in their own trap, could not fight for long and ended up surrendering. Cincinnatus let them go in exchange for them handing over his bosses and then allowed his men to plunder the enemy camp and take whatever they wanted as a prize.
His return was as triumphant for him as it was humiliating for Minutius Esquilinus, who had to resign the consulship; although it was not the only humiliation that there was because the Ecu leaders, except for the three main ones -executed-, had to pass under a yoke supported by spears to stage their submission. Thus, sixteen days after being sworn in as dictator, Cincinato considered his mission accomplished, disbanded the makeshift army and, despite the fact that he still had five and a half months left in office, resigned to return to his farm, causing the general admiration. This episode took place in the year 458 BC
Eight years later he briefly left that retirement to be a candidate for the decemvirate, an extraordinary magistracy that endowed the holder with consular powers and that, in times of the conflict between patricians and plebeians, had been copied from the Greeks together with the Law of the Twelve Tables , before the denunciations of some tribunes of the plebs against the arbitrariness of certain consuls. However, Cincinnatus was not chosen and had to wait until 439 BC. to re-star in the politics of Rome, this time facing not an external danger but an internal one:the coup d'état of Espurio Melio, who was said to want to destroy the republic and crown himself king, for which he hid weapons in his own house that he would give to his supporters when the time came.
As in the case of the Cincinato consulate, there was probably some exaggeration in that denunciation of the facts left by the historians of the time. The problem was that Espurio Melio was a commoner; very rich but commoner, something that the rancid Roman ruling class could not tolerate. Especially when, while the city was plunged into a serious subsistence crisis, with a famine that pushed many people to throw themselves into the Tiber to die quickly instead of agonizingly, Melio bought wheat from the Etruscans and sold it at a very low price among the people. , promoting in passing his candidacy to be consul. His opponents, basically patricians, considered that a dictator was needed to overcome the trance and Tito Quincio Capitolino Barbado, consul at the time, ran to call his cousin Cincinnatus (or his brother, according to versions). 
By then he was already an old man in his eighties but he accepted. He appointed magister equitum to Cayo Servilio Estructo Ahala, a military laureate whom he commissioned to arrest Melio the same night that he was going to seize power. Ahala placed his men at strategic points in the city, especially in the Capitol and some fortresses, and at dawn, when the people gathered in the Forum for the inauguration, he ordered Melio to appear before the dictator. The aforementioned distrusted and tried to seek refuge among the assembled crowd, but the magister equitum he pursued him and killed him. For this it is assumed that he used a pugio that he carried hidden under his armpit (it was forbidden to carry weapons during public acts), although there are scholars who consider this a kind of etiological myth to explain the reason for the cognomen of him (ahala is an Etruscan word meaning "armpit").
Cincinnatus thanked him for his services, assuring that he had saved the State, and later authors also highlighted that action as patriotic, in the case of Cicero or Plutarch, who affirmed that Servilia, the mother of Marcus Junius Brutus (Julius Caesar's assassin), descended from him.; there seems to be no more foundation in this than connecting the character with an illustrious tyrannicide. Now, Melio's death was considered a crime at the time, and in fact Ahala was put on trial, escaping a conviction only by agreeing to go into exile voluntarily. It is interesting to note that, according to Tito Livio, three years later a tribune of the plebs also called Espurio Melio demanded the confiscation of Ahala's properties, although the motion was rejected.
As for Cincinato, he once again renounced the dictatorship, since he had solved the problem, and that made him increase his fame as a man of integrity. So much so that other legends arose about him, like the one in which when one of his sons was prosecuted for incompetence in war, he was acquitted because no one wanted to humiliate his father by giving him a sentence. He died around 430 BC, about to turn ninety, and there is no doubt that something as rare as a politician capable of relinquishing power of his own free will deserves to name streets and cities.